My Top Twenty Action Films: #11, #10, #9

11. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

This is the last watchable Indiana Jones film at present. The one that followed this one, and shall not be named, is nothing but a terrible cliche, with an awful plot, bad jokes and is tainted by the Lucas/Spielberg curse.

The curse? this happens when they make more than a trilogy of same name films.

The Last Crusade starts out quite cleverly. You think you are seeing someone but in fact, it is not who we think it is, anyway..

We see a young Indiana Jones (River Phoenix) back when he was a boy scout riding a horse with some other boy scouts. Indiana being Indiana decides to leave the others to investigate a cave.

Inside the cave he encounters some robbers looting an ornamental cross. Indiana decides to steals the ornamental cross from the robbers and then runs from them when he is discovered.

Indiana returns home triumphantly after "liberating" the cross and tries to speak to his father, who is busy working on his grail diary. Indiana is reprimanded for his interruption and forced to count to twenty, in Greek. As he counts he leaves his father to carry on his work as he spots the local sheriff arriving with the robbers. Indiana is forced to return what he stole from the thieves.

One of the robbers is clearly impressed by the Indiana and perhaps offers him what his father should be offering him, encouragement, as well as the hat we always see Indiana wearing in all of his films.

We fast forward to the adult Indiana's (Harrison Ford) present day just as he is about to take a punch to the face. Indiana fights on a boat for the very same cross he found as a boy scout, this time, he takes it, and keeps it.

We get to see the usual Indiana Jones plots performed well and on top of that we see Indiana save his Father (Sean Connery) from a Nazi castle, meet Adolf Hitler and meet a very holy cup guard (Robert Eddison).

The familiar faces are here also with Dr. Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott), who has taken on the role of a likable, semi-bubbling English fool which characteristics didn't seem apparent in the other films. And of course, Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) who continues to play the helpful generous friend of Indiana Jnr.

10. Face/Off

Sean Archer (John Travolta) is an FBI agent with a huge personal vendetta against freelance terrorist Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage). This is understandable due to Castor Troy unintentionally shooting and killing Archer's son while trying to shoot and kill Archer.

The film starts where other films normally finish, a showdown. Archer finally, after a long time has Castor Troy trapped, and now all he has to do is reel him in. Everything seems to be quite simple.

Archer's plan to catch Castor Troy works but suffers a few agent fatalities. Pollux (Alessandro Nivola) CT's brother is captured but unfortunately CT ends up in a coma at the operation finale.

Doctors say it is literally impossible for CT to come out of his coma. Good! Who cares!?!?

The only problem is that CT and his brother Pollux have set up a huge bomb somewhere in LA; it can be disarmed.. But only If the location is found.

Something drastically impossible needs to happen in order to prevent this atrocity, but what!?

Archer agrees to have his face taken off, have his physique restructured, and to have CT's face placed on the front of his head; it looks better than it sounds. With this new look, he plans to cozy up to Pollux and learn the location of the bomb.

Things do not go to plan. CT awakens, faceless, and he decides to take Archer's face and live as Archer. The biggest problem of all is that CT kills everyone that knows about the "facelift".

Archer must live as CT and associate with CT's friends, as well as his girlfriend, Sasha (Gina Gershon), in order to bring CT down before he ruins his legacy, career and of course, sleeps with his wife, Dr Eve Archer (Joan Allen), again.

9. Watchmen

Here we have another Alan Moore comic which has been made into a film. A lot of people have complained about the comics being made into films but I do not think it is such a bad thing. For one, I really liked this film, and for two, people are bound to go and check out the comics and other works of Alan Moore based on the films.

The film opens with an unknown person attacking and killing a member of a new defunct group called 'Watchmen'. A group of people who masked their identities and fought crime. For some though, it was not always clear where the priorities or motivates lay.

Some of the Watchmen are:

Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), a somewhat paranoid loner who only has one mission in life and that is to punish those that need punishing.

The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), A sex crazed guy with a swirling moral compass who has committed a lot of acts of violence, some arguably deserving, and many definitely not deserving.